No wonder we watch: 48 hours of footage uploaded to YouTube every minute

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report today documenting …

Over 3 billion videos are viewed each day on YouTube. The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report today documenting the demographics of Americans using video-sharing sites. The Pew Internet Project is one of seven projects that comprise the Pew Research Center, a non-profit “fact tank” that produces reports on American trends and attitudes.

Pew found that 71 percent of online adults have gone to video-sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo. That is a 5 percentage point increase from Pew’s research in 2010, and a 38-point increase from 2006. Twenty-eight percent of Americans use video-sharing sites on a given day.

Kathleen Moore, the Pew Internet Project analyst who wrote the report, explained the increase in usage: “The rise of broadband and better mobile networks and devices has meant that video has become an increasingly popular part of users’ online experiences video-sharing sites are very social spaces as people vote on, comment on, and share these videos with others.”

Moore also cites the dramatic increase in content as a major reason for the expanded viewership. Forty-eight hours of footage are uploaded to YouTube every minute, adding up to nearly 8 years of content daily.

And YouTube isn’t just for the young crowd. Even though YouTube lists its demographic as 18-54 years old, Pew found that nearly one-third of online Americans age 65 and older uses video sharing sites.

Parents are also 20 percentage points more likely to have used a video sharing site than non-parents. In fact, parental use has increased in the past year while non-parental use has dipped.

Pew was surprised to find that rural Internet users are just as likely to have used video-sharing sites as urban and suburban users; an insignificant 4 percentage points separate the three demographics. However, rural users are less likely to use the sites on a given day (14 percent compared to 31 percent for suburban and 33 percent for urban).

The Project also reported that non-whites are more likely to use video-sharing sites than whites. Sixty-nine percent of whites admitted to using the sites (more than double the 31 percent in 2006), compared to 79 percent of non-whites (up from the 41 percent in 2006).

There is a direct correlation between household income and the percent of Internet users who use video-sharing sites; the study found that online Americans with an income of $75,000 are most likely to use the sites, at 81 percent.

Moore commented on the ability to upload and stream video via mobile devices as a recent phenomenon impacting the usage of video-sharing sites. Pew did not ask about mobile devices in its study until this year, but found that 34 percent of American cell phone owners have shot video on their phone; 26 percent have watched video on their phone, and 22 percent have used their phone to post videos or photos online.